Multi-channel audio coding (commonly referred to as spatial audio coding) captures a spatial image of a multi-channel audio signal into a compact set of spatial parameters that can be used to synthesize a high quality multi-channel representation from a transmitted downmix signal.
In a multi-channel audio system, where several coding schemes are supported, a downmix signal can become time delayed relative to other downmix signals and/or corresponding spatial parameters due to signal processing (e.g., time-to-frequency domain conversions).